After eight years of hard work, the day has finally arrived. Today, September 14, the Haiku project has released its very first alpha release. With the goal of recreating one of the most beloved operating systems in history, the BeOS, they took on no small task, but it seems as if everything is finally starting to come together. Let's talk about the history of the BeOS, where Haiku comes from, and what the Alpha is like.

BeOS is the sole reason I got interested in operating systems and have been reading OSNews for 7+ years.

Just an ordinary user, back in 2001 Windows 98 was BSODding me out of my mind. I found BeOS R5 Personal Edition. So easy, so fast. So damned fast. Why the hell couldn't Windows 98 be that fast? It was the same hardware.

BeOS really was an operating system for modern personal computers, not a kludge on top of something designed for mini-computers in the 60's & 70's.

It made realise that my problems weren't the computer, it was the operating system. It made me appreciate getting it right from the beginning instead of slapping things onto a non-personal-computer operating system (yes, I'm looking at you, Linux & BSDs: why do I have to pretend to be typing on a teletype terminal half the time?)

And now Haiku has reached alpha. An operating system truly designed from the ground up for *personal* computers. Not a bloated kludge.

Thank you for your years of hard work, thank you for offering a way forward. Thanks for giving us the freedom to have a real *personal*computer operating system.